What now for France?

The images from across the ocean have been painful: an office room, its floor covered with blood and papers; the arc of iron latticework at the Eiffel Tower’s base, framed around two soldiers, patrolling with semi-automatic weapons; massive crowds, marching for their very freedom of speech.

There is no justification for terrorism. Not ever. But long after the pain, the anxiety, and the anger begin to subside over Paris’ twin massacres, at the Charlie Hebdo offices and at a kosher market, the poisonous roots of the country’s cultural conflict will continue to spread. Unless they are confronted. Unless something changes.

That sad fact was evident again today in a New York Times article headlined, “Crisis in France Sign of Chronic Ills.” It paints a stark, almost hopeless portrait of France’s version of the “suburbs,” the banlieus, where a predominantly muslim population lives isolated, with staggering unemployment and sometimes seething anger.

“For many … French Muslims, the nation’s preoccupation with last week’s attacks at the hands of Islamic extremists presents a mere distraction from a fundamental social crisis that has plagued France’s immigrant neighborhoods for decades,” The Times writes.

Half of those who live in these communities have not finished high school. it reports. One in five is unemployed. Among the young, that rate is sometimes twice as high. Je suis Charlie does not resonate here. Alienation does. And that is the problem.

Nothing justifies terror. But rage at other things feeds its roots. Until the French find some means to raise the standard of living in these dreary communities — to provide some hope — more danger awaits. This saddens me in a very personal way. Paris, a place I’ve visited 13 or 14 times, is to Kathy and me the world’s most magical city. It’s a place we will bring our 7-year-old granddaughter Devon this summer, to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which she’s looked at in a photo on our living room wall as long as I or she can remember.

But as enchanting as is a summer walk along the Seine, as romantic as is an evening boat ride past the twinkling lights of the tower, as uplifting as is an afternoon in the Musee d’Orsay, visits to Paris, and even elsewhere in France, will have a darker backdrop for the foreseeable future.

It’s a darkness that’s been gathering for awhile. When we arrived in Aix-en-Provence on sabbatical almost exactly a year ago, we quickly saw the seeds of anti-semitism in the news. Then the “comedian” Dieudonné was marching around giving the quenelle, an inverted Nazi salute. Now a misguided extremist is shooting strangers in a kosher market in the heart of one of Paris’ most heterogenous communities. I read last week that 7,000 Jews had emigrated from France in the last year. That sense of insecurity, however — for Jews and ultimately anyone else — won’t go away by further isolating or denigrating the entire muslim population of the country, which today is Europe’s largest (though estimated at just 8 percent of France’s population).

No, France, which has over the decades derided the discrimination within U.S. borders, which welcomed black artists, musicians and writers to Paris at a time when places in America kept their doors shut, has its own racism problem today, its own segregation. It is now front and center. And something besides police crackdowns, massive parades and a vigilant public must be tried for this land to fully reclaim its rightful place as the home of liberté, fraternité and egalité. There is no way around it.

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One Reply to “What now for France?”

Jerry, I also have noticed over the years from our year in 1971 in Germany and in France in 2005-8, esp a visit to the Vanderhoofts, who were in Heidelburg for a year with kids in school a still barely subterranean anti-semetic attitude. Of course Jews AND Arabs are semetic and to PURE Europeans are in the same category of ..lesser beings…. I can’t say this to many people.. but it is worrisome.

We are around except for Feb 9- 18 and then in April for Mary’s wedding April 9-12. Our life is 200% less complicated than yours. But whenever you find a glimmer of a chance to get together, we would LOVE to see you. Ellen and Frank

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I’ve never measured a successful trip by how many destinations I can circle on a map or check off a Bucket List. To me the best journey, and the best ravel, moves more like a good conversation. It ebbs and flows. It rarely rushes, but it’s also animated and unpredictable. It is filled with banter and laughter, and invites participants to linger rather than march forward inexorably like a tightly wound clock. Want to have dessert? A second glass of wine? A detour in a back-alley artisan’s shop? A pause at an overview by the side of the trail? Why not. Read more.